561. Chapter 561

Basketball’s never been her thing.

She’ll scowl at anyone who dares to suggest it’s a height thing, and Winn still has the bruise on his arm from their horseplay a few weeks ago when he’d made the mistake of saying something along those lines.

But when Kara turns on her puppy eyes and tells Maggie that it’s her big sister’s first game of the season, Maggie can’t say no to the freshman girl who so warmly welcomed Maggie into a loving school community for the first time in her life.

So she tags along, exchanging a knowing grin with Lucy as Kara nervously takes Lena’s hand on one side and James’s on the other, as and Winn babbles along at top speed to Clark, his face getting redder the closer they get to the school’s gym, the closer they get to the crowd slowly forming for this season’s opening game.

She tags along, and she expects to have fun; but because of the company, not because of the game.

That is, until she lays eyes on the captain of the school team, who scans the stands with keen eyes until she find’s Maggie’s and waves and grins and winks.

Maggie blinks and forgets what breathing is. What...

Until she realizes that Kara has jumped out of her seat and is furiously waving back to the team captain.

The team captain with a black sweatband holding back her short, perfect, is-it-isn’t-it red hair, sweat already running in gorgeous rivulets down gorgeous, strong arms, long legs, and...

And Danvers written on the back of her jersey.

Of course she wasn’t winking and waving and grinning at Maggie like that. She was winking and waving and grinning at Kara.

“Kara, that’s... that’s your sister?” Maggie manages to choke out, and Lucy stops laughing with Lena and James to stare intently at her roommate.

“Yeah, team captain, isn’t it great?” Kara beams, too excited to notice Maggie’s shell-shocked eyes and slack jaw.

“Earth to Sawyer. Come in, Sawyer,” Winn leans over Lucy to murmur, and Maggie swats away his teasing hand gently without taking her eyes off of the team captain.

Alex, her name is. Alex.

For the first time, Kara’s amazing big sister -- always busy in the lab or at practice -- takes a shape in Maggie’s mind as something other than... well, Kara’s big sister.

Maggie gulps.

“We can get Kara to introduce you, you know,” Lucy follows Winn’s lead, but Maggie barely hears her.

Barely hears her, because Alex is calling warmup drills and nodding efficiently when her teammates do well, chiding encouragingly when they don’t. Pumping them up for the game, shooting the ball -- perfect, every time, and Maggie has never thought much about the sound a basketball makes when it swishes through the basket, but now the soft, sweet, satisfying sound turns her on beyond comprehension -- like the leader she is, at once like she knows all eyes in the gym are on her and like no one’s eyes are on her at all.

Maggie doesn’t remember much of the game, except that she doesn’t speak. She doesn’t cheer. She only claps when Lucy nudges her.

She just stares. She just accepts the soda that James makes her drink, because he knows her mouth must be dry as the desert.

She does dimly register, though, that Alex is more than the team captain, more than her school’s star power forward.

Alex is gritty -- she gets slammed to the ground more than once by the opposing team’s massive center, once hitting her chin on the court and coming up bloody. She wipes it away like she barely notices, and when her coach forces her out of the game for a moment, she barely seems to notice her mouth being tended to, her eyes are so fixed on the game, on supporting her teammates.

Alex is clever and creative and focused -- she sees things better, faster, than even the best players on the court; sees holes in the defense that no one else can, sees opportunities for her teammates to score that no one believed possible, sees how to rile the crowd with a simple twitch of her lips and toss of her head.

Alex is both selfless and cocky -- she might score more than anyone else in the game, but she also has more assists; she sets more picks -- or at least, that’s what Maggie thinks Lucy calls them -- than anyone else on the team, but she also has a heady way of grinning when she scores that goes straight to Maggie’s core.

Alex comes away with a triple double and Maggie comes away with heat pooling between her legs and trembling hands.

Trembling, because Kara, flushed with her big sister’s victory, is leading her friends down to the locker room exit to wait for Alex after the game, so she can be the first non-teammate to hug her and to inspect her injuries, because Rao knows Alex won’t inspect her own.

Trembling, because when Alex’s eyes -- still glistening with victory -- meet hers for the first time over Kara’s shoulder, fireworks go off in Maggie’s stomach and everyone else in the multiverse ceases to exist.

Trembling, because Alex moves to shake her hand, and her hands are at once calloused and soft, strong and gentle.

“I’m Alex,” she tells her unnecessarily, and Maggie tries to remember language.

“I know,” is the only thing she comes up with, and she’s never been more grateful for Kara’s cousin Clark.

“Alex, this is Kara’s good friend Maggie. You know, the one who helped her out of that tricky situation at that house party a couple weeks ago.”

Maggie hadn’t known that the intensity in Alex’s eyes could increase, but it does at Clark’s words. Alex’s eyes rake up and down Maggie’s body, quickly, thoroughly.

Their hands are still clasped.

Their friends are silent, watching. Waiting. Hoping.

Alex licks her lips.

Maggie wants to kiss them.

“Well, Maggie, seems like I owe you a thank you. For taking care of my sister.”

“Oh, I um, what are friends for, right, I --”

“Let me take you out tonight. The team’s going out to celebrate the opener, and I uh... I’d love to bring a date. I mean. If you wanted.”

Alex doesn’t hear Maggie’s response over Lucy and Kara’s mutual shrieks, but she doesn’t have to -- the answer is shining in Maggie’s eyes.